New Legal Thriller: Six SCOTUS justices killed while court is in session... .

Well, my first question was "who is still alive?" But this is a work of fiction.

The Last Justice (Sterling & Ross Publishers, 2012)[Amazon] is Anthony J. Franze's frist novel. In "real life", he is a lawyer in the Appellate and Supreme Court practice at a large Washington, D.C. law firm and an adjunct professor of law, teaching courses in Federal Courts and Appellate Practice. Here's the blurb for his legal thriller:

Chaos erupts at the U.S. Supreme Court when an assassin guns down six justices as they are hearing a case.

Solicitor General Jefferson McKenna, the government's top lawyer in the Supreme Court, is appointed to the multiagency commission investigating the murders. As Congress draws battle lines over who will replace the slain justices, the commission follows clue after clue, each one pointing to an unlikely suspect:  McKenna himself.

In a desperate bid to prove his innocence, McKenna, on the run with his deputy, Kate Porter, must track down a disgraced law clerk with ties to hidden Saudi assets. But their search leads to unexpected alliances, unearthing dark secrets and corruption at the highest levels -- and the people with clues to the riddle keep turning up dead.  From the marble halls of the high court to the inner corridors of the West Wing, from the D.C. housing projects to the desolate back roads of a New York Indian reservation, McKenna and Porter are on a collision course with a shadowy enemy who will stop at nothing to keep the truth buried.

From its explosive first page to its haunting conclusion, The Last Justice explores the politics of law, the bounds of friendship and love, and the frightening price of unbridled ambition.

[JH]